Teresa, My Love: An Imagined Life of the Saint of Avila

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po — ten.…………………tes

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F^#EF^#G^# A E D C^# B A A.…

…….…. vit hu — mi — les

The stately notes would spiral through the early-morning air, carrying me with them as they rose toward unimaginable expanses that I could barely discern at that age, but I could tell how they uplifted my father until I felt exultant too, sounds pulsing through my lungs, my blood, like a happy cascade of laughter…(Lays down the pen, closes the book, leans chin on clasped hands. Silence. Then, in neutral voice.) Have I come to the end, at long last, of my analysis of fatherhood, my Oedipus complex to be exact…as demanded by the Psychoanalytic Society of Paris…by rescuing my father from oblivion and making my peace with his voice, over and above his function, his function as a medic of course, as well as the inevitable paternal function…all this thanks to my roommate? (Forced smile.) Well, it’ll do for now, and for a long time to come, I hope. I can say goodbye to Teresa now, withdrawing into my father’s youthful voice.…Of course I don’t intend to say a word to Jérôme Tristan, who’s bound to retort to the effect that I’m not well, or positively in regression. Nor to Bruno, he’d only try to convert me to Buddhism. Nor to Andrew, who would make the most of this opportunity to tease the “poor thing” I become when he wants to impose himself, however sweetly. Maybe I’ll teach Paul the “Deposuit”: his singing is as pitch-perfect as his emotions. Just him. There’s no one as sensitive as Paul to what these kinds of melody, words, voices, are all about…the way they don’t say what they’re saying.…Sounds that must have lulled me constantly, from birth to when I was about six years old. “Depoooo…suit, depoooo…suit poteeee…ntes de seeee…de…et exaltaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaa…vit huuumiiiles.…”

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De — po………………….…su — it

C^# C^#……………BA G^#F^#E^#D^# E^#G^#B D

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C^# A^#C^#A G^#C^#G^# F^#DF^# E^#C^#

po — ten………………tes

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de se………………………………de

G^# A F^# D^# C^#BA BAG^#B E DC^#B

Et ex — al- ta………………

C^#BAC^# F^# EDC^# DC^#BC^# DC^#DE

……………………….….

F^#EF^#G^# A E D C^# B A A.…

…….…vit hu — mi — les

(Pause.)

SYLVIA LECLERCQ, against a faintly heard fragment of Bach’s “Magnificat,” performed by a clear tenor voice. “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble.…” To think how often I must have heard it since, that soaring “Deposuit,” looping through clouds and lights! That “heritage hit,” as my mother used to call it, among what is called “our sort”.…(Sigh.) But it’s never given me the thrill I got from agnostic Thomas when he sang it a cappella. The thrill that led me all unsuspecting to Teresa, who led me back to him. With this dream, the circle is closed. Well then: farewell!

She does not put down the pen, or close the notebook: her hand falls still over the lines.

“Depoooo…suit, depoooo…suit poteeee…ntes de seeee…de…et exaltaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaa…vit huumiiiles.…”

Here the front of the stage grows dark, so that we can barely make out the form of Sylvia Leclercq, once more writing at her desk. Spotlights pick out the portrait of Teresa in her diamond. Slides are projected over it from time to time, showing rapid glimpses of Luis de Morales’s Virgin and Child; Bernini’s Transfixion; Zurbarán’s Saint Francis, housed in Lyon; El Greco’s Christ in the Garden of Olives, in Lille; the royal monastery San Lorenzo del Escorial, by the architects Juan Batista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera; Rubens’ Rape of the Daughters of Leucippe, in Munich; and the vault of the Church of Saint Ignatius in Rome, painted by Andrea Pozzo. Over these images, only Sylvia’s monologue is heard.